Ben's Bits

If you haven't heard about Juan Manuel Lozano perhaps you should. Lozano has devoted most of his life to building a personal jetpack at his home 50 miles south of Mexico City. Along the way he has invented and sold a distiller for 90% pure Hydrogen Peroxide (which he uses to fuel his jetpack) and a super efficient "Penta M" catalyst pack which converts the fuel into steam. He has no formal education beyond high school and only standard aerobatic pilot training. Popularized in the 1960s by Wendell Moore of the Bell Aerospace company the devices have been featured in everything from James Bond films to the 1984 Summer Olympics. Lozano has successfully completed a series of tethered test flights with his rocket pack and hopes to perfect and begin selling his design for $350,000 each. Considering that only 12 people have ever flown untethered rocket packs that's no small feat. It's also one that has earned Lozano and his company, Technologia Aerospacial Mexicana, a prime article by Larry Smith in the March 2006 Popular Mechanics magazine entitled "Ready for Takeoff?". It's a great article and I encourage you to read up on this amazing tinkerer and backyard rocket scientist.